“Peace, brother,” chuckled the fishmonger, “your sister smells for treason as a dog for salt fish. There is a barbarian carpet merchant—a Babylonian, I presume—who has taken the empty chambers above Demas’s shield factory opposite. He seems a quiet, inoffensive man; there are a hundred other foreign merchants in the city. One can’t cry ‘Traitor!’ just because the poor wight was not born to speak Greek.”
“I do not like Babylonish merchants,” propounded Polus, dogmatically; “to the jury with him, I say!”
“At least he has a visitor,” asserted Clearchus, who had long been silent. “See, a gentleman wrapped in a long himation is going up to the door and standing up his walking stick.”
“And if I have eyes,” vowed the juror, squinting through his hands in the half light, “that closely wrapped man is Glaucon the Alcmæonid.”
“Or Democrates,” remarked Clearchus; “they look much alike from behind. It’s getting dark.”
“Well,” decided Phormio, “we can easily tell. He has left his stick below by the door. Steal across, Polus, and fetch it. It must be carved with the owner’s name.”
The juror readily obeyed; but to read the few characters on the crooked handle was beyond the learning of any save Clearchus, whose art demanded the mystery of writing.
“I was wrong,” he confessed, after long scrutiny, “ ‘Glaucon, son of Conon.’ It is very plain. Put the cane back, Polus.”
The cane was returned, but the juror pulled a very long face.
“Dear friends, here is a man I’ve already suspected of undemocratic sentiments conferring with a Barbarian. Good patriots cannot be too vigilant. A plot, I assert. Treason to Athens and Hellas! Freedom’s in danger. Henceforth I shall look on Glaucon the Alcmæonid as an enemy of liberty.”